1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a shooting apparatus capable of shooting moving images, and a method for controlling the shooting apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A digital camera is provided with a function of automatically controlling various shooting conditions. Unfortunately, an image shot under automatic control may not necessarily be an image as intended by the shooting person. For example, an image shot at an automatically set amount of exposure may be brighter or darker than intended by the shooting person. As such, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2009-111635 discloses a camera with bracket shooting mode, in which still images are successively shot while a shooting condition such as an amount of exposure is varied stepwise.
In bracket shooting mode, for example, a first image is shot with an optimum control value determined under automatic control, and two images are further shot under conditions with control values shifted positively and negatively from the optimum control value, respectively. Through the bracket shooting, the shooting person can obtain an image that matches the person's intension best among the three images.
Due to digitization of shooting technologies, cameras capable of shooting moving images as well as still images are available. In still image shooting, states of an object, such as the luminosity and color tone, can be checked before the shooting. In moving image shooting, however, various changes may occur in an object during the shooting.
With a recent increase in the number of female camera users, moving images of daily experiences, for example a cooking process, are increasingly shot. For example, as shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B, a moving image of grilling meat may be shot. Unfortunately, it is not easy to set shooting conditions (such as an aperture and an exposure time) at the start of the shooting by predicting an image 28A2 in which the grilling is finished as shown in FIG. 1B from an image 28A1 in which the grilling is started as shown in FIG. 1A. In addition, the meat 91 undergoes changes in color etc. with changes in its doneness, and the changing part (the meat 91) is an unspecified, small part in the screen. If automatic control is performed to set optimum shooting conditions for the part of the meat 91, the luminosity and color tone of objects other than the meat 91, for example a person 92 and a background 93, are changed with the changes of the shooting conditions.
That is, when an object becomes brighter or darker during moving image shooting, automatic control is performed so that a moving image with constant luminosity is obtained regardless of the changes in luminosity.
Japanese Patent No. 2765642 discloses an exposure control device for a video camera, with which a bright object is shot relatively brighter and a dark object is shot relatively darker by correcting an automatic control condition by an amount of correction smaller than an optimum amount of correction for luminosity changes of the object.